Friday, January 19, 2018

Hi everyone,
This is just a quick update,
the new game I've been making has made a ton of progress since my last post here, but it will still be awhile longer before I'm ready to do the full-reveal of the game. I'm not sure yet, but I should probably be ready to reveal the game between sometime late this month and sometime next month. I hope you guys will look forward to it.

Saturday, December 9, 2017

Hi everyone,
The harem game engine has seen a tremendous amount of progress, and I will probably do a proper reveal of the game along with the overview storyline on my next post once I have the storyline in order. But for now, I was going to talk more about game design relating to the overmaps. This is a bit technical like the last post though.

(image reference is from Fire Emblem on the GBA)

In tactical games such as fire emblem, there are different types of terrains that effect the character differently. An example of this would be terrain such as rivers, mountains or forest. They can effect the character's movement, give additional stats, be impassable by certain characters and so on. But how is a system like this made? One way is to differentiate different terrains by giving them tags. Then effect the character based on what terrain tags are near.

This may sound a little confusing, but in case of the engine I'm using, first I start with something called a tileset(an image that is met to be broken into pieces and placed on the gamemap to form the land, each piece a fixed size(32x32 pixels) and is called a tile). I place these tiles on the gamemap to form the land(the game's floor/background) you see while playing the game. Tiles are very common in 2D games, including game engines such as Rpg Maker.

With a system i made in place, the tiles themselves can be used to automatically mark different terrains. For example, if you have different tiles depicting water such as a river or lake, you can give them all the water terrain tag. When the system is in place, the tags look something like this:

(different terrains are represented here by different numbers)

In this example, each type of tile has a numbered terrain tag. The areas with no tiles have a terrain tag numbered "0". Using a system like this, it is possible to have as many different types of terrain interactions as you want. For example, if terrain tag 4 was for water, you could have the character movement be reduced when trying to pass through terrain tag 4.(another thing in the image above is automatic tiling, a script I made to automatically join tiles based on their origination to each other, similar to rpg maker).
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Another thing tactical games have is an AI, or Artificial Intelligence for the computer player. This can be made many different ways, but one way is to design it to think in a series of steps. Here is a series of steps that can be used:

1st, at the beginning of the AI team's turn. The first character in the team would look at it's stats and it's teammate's stats, as well as the enemy teams.

2nd, it would choose an action based on this information and what the character is capable of doing. There are many factors that can be considered here to help the AI choose an action such as level, health, attack, defense..etc. For example, in fire emblem, a healer AI character may notice that a character in it's team has low health. So the character's desired action would be heal that character.

3rd, the character would move so that it can do this action. In case of the healing character, he would move next to the character if the healer can walk that far. If the healer cannot reach the injured character in that turn, the healer may see if they can heal someone else or just simply move closer to the injured character. If the moving character was a sword-welder instead of a healer, they may move for the purpose of getting closer to an enemy that they can attack.

4th, the character will do the desired action. In case of the healer, they would heal the injuried character that they are now standing next to.

5th, the character's turn would be over, so they would be marked as inactive and then this whole process would repeat with the remaining team members until there is no one left to move.

Note:pathfinding is used throughout these steps for the AI.
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This is one of the ways to program the movement for the AI on an overmap.

Tactical games are among the most complex games to make but hopefully none of what I said was too confusing. Anyways, I will probably do a reveal of the game on the next post.Also, you can still vote on the poll here.

Friday, December 1, 2017

Hi everyone,
I'm not sure how interesting the following would be but I thought you'll might like to hear a bit about the more technical side of the new game's development.

Tactical/Strategy RPGs games are among the most difficult types of games
to make(for making the engine from scratch), one of the main reasons
for this is the complexity.

For this game's battle system, the gameplay happens mainly in 2 different view modes: top-down and side-scrolling. The top-down(overmap) view is similar to tactical rpgs such as fire emblem where you select each character and move them. The side-scrolling(combat) view is more like platforming-style fighting with the player controlling the character directly with the keyboard or gamepad. As for the basic flow of the game, you move characters in top-down view and enter direct combat in the side-scrolling view. But for now, I'll focus this post on the top-down(overmap) interactions.

The overmaps in this game uses a 64x64 pixel grid based movement system similar to games such as fire emblem. Original I made it using a much smaller 32x32 pixel grid, but I wanted to make the characters bigger(which is also easier on path-finding) so I decided to go with 64x64.

The test-build image above shows the mother and daughter(as well as other things) on the grid-based overmap. The blue squares on the map represents the daughter's movement range(think of each blue square as a grid-step, here you can see the daugther's movement is set to 5 grid-steps). The grid system and basic movement on it is pretty easy for me to make, but what makes things more difficult is the path-finding, specific for the blue-squares here.

If you're wondering what path-finding is, it's basically finding the shortest route to get from one point to another while avoiding obstacles.
Without considering obstacles, the blue squares' positions can be calculated pretty easily.
For example, the daughter's movement is set to 5 grid-spaces, which means she can move 5 spaces away from where she is standing. This is represented by the blue-squares.

But you might be wondering how does the game know where to draw each blue square?
First look at them vertically, they are drawn here in columns. Specifically, the way the number of blue squares per column is calculated and drawn is like this: Start 5 grid-spaces to the left(5 is the daughter's movement) and draw 1 square, then grown 1 up and 1 down as it moves to the right until it reaches the daughters position(now 11 blue-squares), then reverse the process to make the right side(ending with 1 again on the right side). And if there is a collision, the blue square isn't drawn at that location(in this example the big red box is the collision object).

This may seem like enough to make a good range of movement at first. However, when you move the daughter next to the red-collision object, there will be directions she cannot walk 5 spaces due to collisions with the red-collision object(but the blue squares won't account for this(see above image). note: the daughter cannot walk through the red-collision object, she must go around it.).

One of the ways to fix this is to use path-finding on each blue-square. For this I mean that each square will see if a path can be made from it's position to the daughter character's. If a path 5 grid-spaces long or less is found, the blue-square is drawn on-screen, otherwise it isn't. With every blue-square using path-finding it might sound like that would be slow, but it all happens instantly due to factors such as the size of the grid, the distance from the daughter and the path-finding algorithm used.

After path-finding is applied(and an attack range of 3 is added and represented by red squares), the movement looks like this. Now it correctly shows that she can only walk 5 spaces in each direction while also accounting for the collision object next to her. This is basically how the movement/attack grid is calculated and drawn in the game now.

If your wondering about the long-skinny-red objects, those represent enemies, if she move in range and chooses to attack, the grid will correctly show which enemies can be attacked(see above image). The game also builds a menu based on where your character has moved and what is able she do. For example, in the image above, the 2 menu options right now are "Attack" since she's next to 3 enemies and "Wait"(which ends her action).

If you were to choose to "Attack" one of the enemies, it would take you to the side-scroll view map like this for combat. (The image above shows 2 instances of the mother moving, jumping and attacking for test purposes).

I don't know if you find this post interesting or
confusing but I thought I would try to talk about this game's
development more. Right now, the game can cycle through both view
modes.
I'm still not ready to talk too much about the story just yet, but I will reveal much more in the not to distance future, as well as tell you guys more about the game-play.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

My next new game will be based on a game idea I've had for a very, very long time that I've always really wanted to do but never really had the idea developed before now.

I do not have an official name for this game just yet, but think of the term "Harem Generations" for a hint about the game content. To be more specific(without really going into the storyline), you start with 2 girls(a mother and daughter) and you must impregnate them to increase the population and avoid extinction(build a harem), the babies they give birth to are put into an age acceleration machine that can accelerate the baby's age to maturity. Then you must have sex with your offspring too, repeating the cycle for they sake of humanity.

This will be aHigh-Quality game using a powerful general game engine I've built with gamemaker over this year, and If everything goes as plan, this game will be a post-apocalyptic harem-building game with gameplay (tentative) mainly being turn-based strategy + real-time fighting + dating sim hybrid(with emphasis on strategy during battle).
This game is still in the concept phase mostly(I am making a test build now too though), so somethings may change, but I will reveal much more to you guys about this game in the near future. I hope you guys will look forward to it. ^^

Also if you would like to support the development of game such as this, which takes a great deal of time and work, please consider supporting me on my patreon.

Lastly, I was wondering what you guys think of Broken Hymn and Desires of Persephone now, so I made a poll. Please let me know what you guys think in the poll and/or as a comment down below(also feel free to comment about my new harem game). You can vote on the poll here: http://www.strawpoll.me/14464106

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Desires of Persephone first chapter is finally here and can be downloaded below.

This
is a corruption rpg maker game(inspired by Village of Nightmare) about an evil sorceress named Chandra. she
succeeds in summoning a powerful succubus named Persephone to the human
world. Chandra is in love with Persephone and wants to corrupt the world
by corrupting humans and turning them into Persephone worshipers.

Due
to the length of the game, I've referred to it as the first chapter.
If you like this game and want more of it please let me know.
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If you enjoy any of my works and feel as though you would like to help
ensure that I'm able continue developing them in the future, possibly
someday as more than just a hobby, I would be very grateful for a pledge
on my patreon. I would also like to thank all the people who are or who
have supported me in the past. I really, really appreciate it.

Also, please feel free to leave feedback, comments and suggestions. ^^
that's all for now,
see you later.

Hi everyone,
AmaiSei is now fully completed! The game now features 37 stages, 7 different monster births, and 3 different endings.

Here's some info about the game(some of the following is a re-post):AmaiSei is a puzzle/platforming game that focuses on the interactions between a pregnant elf girl and the player.

The elf girl (named Saori) was violated by a special parasite,
turning her body into a living nursery for birthing monsters. Saori is a
kind, polite and somewhat lecherous elf girl who agrees to help the
player under the condition that he becomes her permanent sexfriend
afterwards.

When Saori has sex with someone, a monster egg cell inside of her will
get fertilized and she can give birth to the new monster. By using the
abilities of the monsters she births, as well as her own skills and the
players, you will be able to solve the game's puzzles. You(the player)
basically interact with Saori and the world with the computer mouse..
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Here is a list of many of features the game has now:
Puzzle-Solving/Platforming
Storyline
Lots of handmade sprites(and some backgrounds, all made from scratch)
Advanced world map system that lets you select stages and unlock new ones
Auto-Save/Load system for saving game data
Record Replays system has new features, now has a menu where you can load saved replays
autotiling system(tiles are joined automatically in a way similar to rpg maker)
powerful eventing system(making it very easy to make events)
custom collision system
Saori will follow your orders
ability to walk and jump
ability to carry certain items
Birth cycle system
ability to have sex and to give birth to 7 different monsters
ability to climb platforms and toss items(by wearing enhancement bracelets)
text/message box system
game text is stored externally(now in a style similar to ren'py's, text system was rewritten twice).

If you enjoy any of my works and feel as though you would like to help
ensure that I'm able continue developing them in the future, possibly
someday as more than just a hobby, I would be very grateful for a pledge
on my patreon. I would also like to thank all the people who are or who
have supported me in the past. I really, really appreciate it.

Also, please feel free to leave feedback, comments and suggestions. ^^
that's all for now,
see you later.